Remembering our roots ~ Ralph & Faye Buzzard

By John Godsman Times Contributor

The family name Buzzard originates from Ridgeway, Mo. Grandparents Hank and Tennie Louise Buzzard came to the Rosebud area in 1914 and started farming. They had two sons.
Ralph’s dad – Ralph Buzzard Sr. – was born in Missouri around 1908, and married Anna Ida Kautz.
Ralph was born in Calgary on May 10, 1928, and he married Babe Lauder in 1953; they had two children, Laurell and Gary. Following their divorce in 1958, Ralph married Faye Ockey (who had three sons) in 1963, and they had a daughter, Shauna. There are 13 grandchildren.
While attending school in Rosebud through Grade 11, Ralph’s father taught him to ride and break horses, an occupation that stayed with him for life. Breaking horses earned him $5 per head. But rodeo was in his genes; starting at age 14 he finished third in his first ever bareback competition at Handhills Lake Stampede. By age 20, he owned 30 bucking horses which he trailed from Youngstown to the Calgary Stampede. Along the way, he picked up additional horses, and on reaching Calgary had approximately 200 horses to sell to the likes of Dick Cosgrave, Reg Kesler and Bruce Flewelling. In 1950, at age 22, he became an outrider for Bob Heberling who won the Calgary chuckwagon races, and Ralph was one of the riders who won the outrider championship that year. In 1953, he participated in the chuckwagon races at Lacombe, and despite a two-second penalty, still won the races. That night, they were entertained by country and western singer Wilf Carter, and I’m told the party went on until dawn. Around this time, he worked in four different coal mines, including Nacmine, East Coulee and Rosebud. In 1958, he worked on drilling rigs east of Brooks, but ended up in hospital with extreme frostbite after being exposed to -30 F temperatures while working on the open derrick.
In 1965, they moved to Chilliwack, B.C. where Ralph started buying hundreds of Holstein calves, selling them in Alberta. But the call of racing was in his blood. Initially he started racing thoroughbreds, transferring to racing chariots, and eventually back to chuckwagons. He was a force to be reckoned with on the professional chuckwagon circuit. On his own, with no sponsors, he relied on his own experience and knowledge of horses to build his wagon teams, one horse at a time. It took quite a while for Ralph to complete two teams of horses, but they soon began breaking track records, at towns like Bassano, Byemoor, Lake McGregor and Lacombe. At one time, eight well known different chuckwagon drivers each had a horse in their team, purchased from Ralph – Richard Cosgrave, Jason Glass, Ronnie Glass, Ward Willard, Dave Lewis, Hank Willard, Bill Greenwood and Slim Helme. One of the horses, Hanuman Highway, later sold to Jason Glass, had finished seventh in the 124th Kentucky Derby.
Many of his accomplishments are in the horse racing archives. He won the American Chuckwagon Championship in Cheyenne, Wyo. in 1973, and received a lifetime membership award from the World Professional Chuckwagon Association, and many other awards over the years. His awards and trophies are on display at the Rosebud Museum.
Ralph retired from chuckwagon racing in 1976, but continued to race thoroughbreds on tracks in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan. He also raised and bred thoroughbred colts from 1976 to 1985. The Buzzard name as breeder wasn’t uncommon to see under the winner’s category at any Alberta racetrack. His horses won over 100 races.
Between 2004 and 2014, Ralph drove celebrities in parades like the Calgary Stampede Parade, Hussar, Strathmore, Standard, Gleichen, Rockyford, Rosebud, Drumheller and Three Hills. His favourite celebrity was Jann Arden.
A Long Life Well Lived.